Olympic efforts
Week two of the family holiday here in Mark Warner’s San Agostino resort in Greece.
The bikini is sagging with wear, the designer beach bag is caked in suntan lotion and sand, two pairs of goggles have gone missing and the pedicure I had before I came away is looking decidedly ropey.
Thankfully I can book in at the on-site Viva Salon where cheerful girls in crisp uniforms who apparently never sweat in spite of temperatures in the 30s, can cleanse and renew those of us too exhausted even to contemplate painting our own toenails.
I’ve already seen an example of the important work they do, as my seven-year-old granddaughter came bounding over to me yesterday flashing glamorous vermilion nails that she’d had painted as part of a mum and daughter pamper package.
“Right, now I’m off to go sailing,” she said as she sped off on her wheeled trainers. I gave it about 10 minutes before the first nail chipped. Ah well, I guess none of us can stay ladylike for long.
News of the outside world reaches us in spite of our best efforts to cut ourselves adrift and we are all celebrating the successes of the British Olympic team.
George, the head chef, creates amazing tributes in foodstuffs each night to commemorate every new British gold medal; thus we’ve had a cheese velodrome, the Olympic rings carved in watermelon and a coxless pair in butter (best to say no more).
Since it’s the sitting-down sports at which we excel, I feel at last that I have something in common with our athletes. I am achieving personal bests in my own sitting-down regime on a daily basis and have now conquered the advanced ‘lying down’ manoeuvres, though I did manage some upright activity on a trip to the local town of Kalamata.
A 20-minute taxi ride from the resort, Kalamata is a modern, bustling centre of commerce with great shopping, smart bars and pretty churches, the latter not perhaps fully appreciated by my eight-year-old grandson. “God is everywhere,” he told me seriously, “but especially in Kalamata!”
It was a chance to reconnect with the Greece that exists beyond the boundaries of the resort.
Back in San Agostino I returned to my principal occupation: the Beach Book Bonanza. As part of my paperback fest this holiday, I have very much enjoyed reading A Coach Load of Chaos. Its author, Rob Sissons, very kindly sent me a copy of this, his first novel, inspired by his experiences as a coach tour guide.
Anybody who has been on, or indeed booked, a coach tour will instantly relate to the environment described in Rob’s book and the detail that comes from an insider’s experience lends the events a veracity.
With an offbeat love story (did you know love can blossom in the London Transport Museum or that an interesting chassis can keep a couple together?) and a plot encompassing school days and adult revenge, A Coach Load of Chaos is an admirable debut and a reminder of just how much creative talent is knocking about in the industry.
Before I left for my holiday, I read a review about something called an ‘e-reader’. It’s a device onto which one can download hundreds of novels and read them on a hand-held touch screen.
This would have advantages for travellers like me who could swap the weight of their novels for even more shoes and clothes and who could enlarge the font to make the typeface readable. Perfect when you forget your reading glasses. No more squinting and playing the hokey cokey with your novel.
Apparently, the light is adjustable for easy viewing. I wonder, then, if this spells the end of the beach read as we know it? Will we miss our lotion-stained paperbacks? Or will this modern device open the gates and encourage us all to become well read?
Who knows, perhaps Rob Sissons will be measuring the success of his novel in downloads.
Competitive edge
And so our fortnight draws to a close. Family unity is still intact and indeed has been reinforced by our collective efforts to regain our crowns as quiz winners from last year.
However, third place is all we’ve managed so far. If bronze isn’t good enough for the British Olympians, it’s not good enough for us either! Pass the Trivial Pursuit questions – I need to revise.
Maureen Hill works at Travel Angels, Gillingham, Dorset